Strangers In The Night ©

Having Greek parents can be and handful but sometimes it can be amusing as well.
I was sitting in my mother’s kitchen after I returned her chairs, which came out like new BTW.
When she saw what I could do with chairs she gave me her four wooden kitchen chairs to strip down and re-stain then to reupholster the seats which I spend the day doing and brought them back to her.
My father thinks I went out and bought new ones and replaced his old ones and that's why they looked good.
Yes I have spare money to go buy new chairs for them but tear the shirt off my back to make a seat cover for another, uh huh I bought new ones.
I told him if he believes that then he could always give me 200 bucks for each chair, hell I'll take 100.
I hope you're not waiting for me to tell you he paid me.

Anyhow I was talking with my mother and I told her Leti is coming on the 24th and she asked me who Leti was and I told her someone I know in Mexico.

Then I told her about Nibbles coming on the 28th.
She asked me who Nibbles was and I told her I didn’t know.

"Nibbles, sounds Polish".
"Umm I don't thinks so".

My mother gave me a strange look then asked when Leti was leaving and I told her on the 6th of October.
She gave me this funnier look and said that both will be there at the same time.
I said yes they will.
Then I told her Tootsie and her sister will be here on t he 28th to.

My mother just sat there glaring at me for a long minute then asked me who they were and I told her I didn’t know them either.
I don’t know exactly what she was thinking but I swear her eyes were rolling trying to figure it out.

“So these four women are coming to your house and all will be staying there together with you”.
“Yes”
"Are you brave or stupid"?

“You don’t know these women and they don’t know you but they are all coming from other countries and are sleeping in a house with a strange man they have never met before”.
“Yeah, that’s about right”.

“Do their mothers know”?
“What do you mean do their mother’s know, they are all in the forties and some of them are mothers”?

“It doesn’t matter, I am sure their mother’s wouldn’t be happy about them sleeping in the same house with a strange man”.
“Well if you like I can tell them to bring their mothers along so there would be eight women staying with me”.

This is when my father walked back into the kitchen.
He doesn’t get a chance to sit down in his chair before my mother tells him that four women are moving in with me.

What is it with parents, well mine at least, they manage to twist and mold the situation to suit them.

“They are not moving in, they are visiting”.
“Visiting, moving in, it’s the same thing”.
“D visited you and she left nine years later”.
Ok she had me there.

My father looked at her and asked, “What are you two talking about”?
“Your son has four women moving in with him”.

“What women”?
“He doesn’t know he got them on the computer”.

“You get women on the computer”?
“He does and they come to see him”.

“How do you get internet”?
“What do you need Internet for, you don’t know how to use the phone yet”?

What is it with parents, I am 48 years old almost fifty and they still treat me like I was 6 years old.
I have fathered and raised children.
I have been responsible for most of the decisions that have had to be made in this family for the last ten or maybe more years.
I was the one that decided that my mother would know about her cancer and arraigned for her surgery because the rest were to fucken chicken to do it in case something bad happened.
I have held the power life and death in my hands and STILL, to them I am a child.

I tell them every now and then.
Hey I am almost fifty you know.
Mother: and you still haven’t grown up.
Father: and you still haven’t gotten any brains yet.

Yeah eh, still haven’t grown up or gotten any brains yet huh, wait until i get the doctor to prescribe them laxative and tell them it’s a vitamin and they have to take it three time a day.

And it doesn’t stop there, NOOOOOOOO.

I go home and about an hour later the doorbell rings.
It’s my brother.

I open the door and let him in; he probably wants to use my Internet to see what the soccer scores are.
I don’t understand why he has to come to my place when he has Internet at home, my mother says it’s because he can’t stay away from family.
I think it’s because he wants to scoop something I have that he needs and I am usually right.

“So I hear you have four women moving in with you”.
“Huh……… NO, I have guests coming to visit”.

“How do you manage to get four women to come stay with you at the same time”.
Gezzz
“I offer free chocolate and they come here in herds”.

“Really”?
“Yes, go buy lots of chocolate and go home and wait”.

As you can see when you are in a Greek family, word spreads quickly.
There is nothing you could do to escape prying Greek eyes unless you know how to disappear like I do.
For my whole life I have avoided hanging out with Greeks as much as possible because if you do hang out with Greeks your mother will hear what you are up to before you do it.

To this day my mother has to introduce me to my aunts because they haven’t seen me in decades even though we live in the same city.
My brother they know because he is ears deep into the Greek culture but he can’t get away with anything because my mother gets the phone call that tells her what he is doing.

That’s the way it is, one big fucken soap opera so I avoid it by not associating myself with any of my mothers GMGN (Greek Mothers Gossip Network) sources.
They can make the CIA and KGB look like kindergarten students when it comes to information gathering.

If there were a Greek CIA agent in deeeeeeeep undercover where not even his superiors know where he is, his mother would know.
Mrs. Stathouropoulos would call up and tell her Stella in Cincinnati saw her sister in Detroit who was in Windsor Canada on a shopping trip where she met Voula who told her that she just got back from Cuba and saw Louis your son there under Castro’s jeep with a pair of wire cutters.

A couple of hours later I go next door to my parents place and my aunt and uncle, Mike’s parents are sitting there admiring the new chairs.
As I am returning some dishes I had from the time of the BBQ my aunt comes out and says that she heard that I have four women moving in with me.
Just gave my mother a dirty look and told my aunt I have guests coming for a visit and are leaving the next day.
My aunt just laughed and said that that’s what they all say.
Mike had a date come over once and she didn’t leave for 3 years.
Hmmm she got me there to.

I told all of them that they had to leave because I have more visitors coming in March for my birthday
My mother asked who and I told her it was Emme’s first owner from England.
She asked me how she was doing and if she was still married to that short man with the baldhead and big ears.
I told her yes she was.
Then she asked me if there would be room with the four I will have there still.
Gezz

I went back home to peace and quiet.
I sat there on the couch thinking that three months after they are gone I am going to tell my mother they are all pregnant.

Around 9 pm Mike stopped over for a beer and a joint.
As we were sitting on the couch watching TV he asked me if it was true that I had five women moving in with me and then asked if any of them were blonde.

“Sigh”

Have a nice day

Walker